Extracellular Optical Recording Configuration for Neuronal Action Potential Detection by using Surface Plasmon Resonance: Preliminary Experiment

We propose an extracellular optical recording configuration for neuronal action potential detection by using surface plasmon resonance (SPR). The method does not use fluorescence dyes but still taking advantages of optical recording. As a preliminary experiment, the electrochemical SPR effect without neurons was investigated. This showed that a high resolution SPR setup (10
^-4
~10
^~5
angular shift or more) is required to overcome noise and improve SPR signal. Several issues for neural signal recording are addressed to modify SPR optical configuration